Marijuana users risk death from high blood pressure

People who smoke marijuana are three times more likely to die as a result of high blood pressure, according to new research published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.

During the study, by Georgia State University in the United States, the researchers cross compared data from 1,213 marijuana users with mortality statistics, and adjusted for confounding factors such as alcohol and tobacco intake.

The average duration of cannabis use in the cohort was 11 and a half years. The results showed that, on average, users of the drug are 3.42 times more likely to die from hypertension – and the risk increases with every year of use.